Category Archives: Mortgage

The report shows serious credit card delinquencies rose for the third consecutive quarter, a trend not seen since 2009.

Let’s take a look at a sampling of report highlights and charts.

Household Debt and Credit Developments in 2017 Q2

Aggregate household debt balances increased in the second quarter of 2017, for the 12th consecutive quarter, and are now $164 billion higher than the previous (2008 Q3) peak of $12.68 trillion.

As of June 30, 2017, total household indebtedness was $12.84 trillion, a $114 billion (0.9%) increase from the first quarter of 2017. Overall household debt is now 15.1% above the 2013 Q2 trough.

The distribution of the credit scores of newly originating mortgage and auto loan borrowers shifted downward somewhat, as the median score for originating borrowers for auto loans dropped 8 points to 698, and the median origination score for mortgages declined to 754.

Student loans, auto loans, and mortgages all saw modest increases in their early delinquency flows, while delinquency flows on credit card balances ticked up notably in the second quarter.

Outstanding student loan balances were flat, and stood at $1.34 trillion as of June 30, 2017. The second quarter typically witnesses slow or no growth in student loan balances due to the academic cycle.

11.2% of aggregate student loan debt was 90+ days delinquent or in default in 2017 Q2.

Total Debt and Composition:

Mortgage Origination by Credit Score:

Auto Origination by Credit Score:

30-Day Delinquency Transition:

90-Day Delinquency Transition:

Credit card and auto loan delinquencies are trending up. The trend in mortgage delinquencies at the 30-day level has bottomed. A rise in serious delinquencies my follow.

A really long, long time ago, well before most of today’s wall street analysts made it through puberty, the entire international financial system almost collapsed courtesy of a mortgage lending bubble that allowed anyone with a pulse to finance over 100% of a home’s purchase price…with pretty much no questions asked.

And while the millennial titans of high finance today may consider a decade-old case study on mortgage finance to be about as useful as a Mark Twain novel when it comes to underwriting mortgage risk, they may want to considered at least taking a look at the ancient finance scrolls from 2009 before gleefully repeating the sins of their forefathers.

Alas, it may be too late. AsBlack Knight Financial Servicespoints out, down payments, the very thing that is supposed to deter rampant housing speculation by forcing buyers to have ‘skin in the game’, are once again disappearing from the mortgage market. In fact, just in the last 12 months, 1.5 million borrowers have purchased a home with less than 10% down, a 7-year high.

– Over the past 12 months, 1.5M borrowers have purchased a home by putting down less than 10 percent, which is close to a seven-year high in low down payment purchase volumes

– The increase is primarily a function of the overall growth in purchase lending, but, after nearly four consecutive years of declines, low down payment loans have ticked upwards in market share over the past 18 months

– Looking back historically, we see that half of all low down payment lending (less than 10 percent down) in 2005-2006 involved piggyback second liens ratherthan a single high LTV first lien mortgage

– The low down payment market share actually rose through 2010 as the GSEs and portfolio lenders pulled back, the PLS market dried up, and FHA lending buoyedthe purchase market as a whole

– The FHA/VA share of purchase lending rose from less than 10 percent during 2005-2006 to nearly 50 percent in 2010

– As the market normalized and other lenders returned, the share of low-down payment lending declined consistent with a drop in the FHA/VA share of the purchase market

On the bright side, at least Yellen’s interest rate bubble means that today’s housing speculators don’t even have to rely on introductory teaser rates to finance their McMansions...Yellen just artificially set the 30-year fixed rate at the 2007 ARM teaser rate…it’s just much easier this way.

“The increase is primarily a function of the overall growth in purchase lending, but, after nearly four consecutive years of declines, low down payment loans have ticked upward in market share over the past 18 months as well,” said Ben Graboske, executive vice president at Black Knight Data & Analytics, in a recent note. “In fact, they now account for nearly 40 percent of all purchase lending.”

At that time half of all low down payment loans being made involved second loans, commonly known as “piggyback loans,” but today’s mortgages are largely single, first liens, Graboske noted.

The loans of the past were also far riskier – mostly adjustable-rate mortgages, which, according to the Black Knight report, are virtually nonexistent among low down payment mortgages today. Instead, most are fixed rate. Credit scores of borrowers taking out these loans today are also about 50 points higher than those between 2004 and 2007.

Finally, on another bright note, tax payers are just taking all the risk upfront this time around…no sense letting the banks take the risk while pretending that taxpayers aren’t on the hook for their poor decisions…again, it’s just easier this way.

Concerns over the future of Social Security play a starring role in American seniors’ overall retirement uncertainty — and that’s before considering how much of the benefit might eventually need to go toward unexpected medical expenses.

After factoring in supplemental insurance premiums and other uninsured health costs, the average retiree only takes home 75% of his or her Social Security benefits, according to a new study from researchers at Tufts University and Boston College.

“A substantial share of other households have even less of their benefits left over,” researchers Melissa McInerney of Tufts and Matthew S. Rutledge and Sara Ellen King of BC wrote.

In fact, for three percent of retirees, out-of-pocket health expenses actually exceed their Social Security Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) benefits, the team concludes.

These findings are part of an overall trend: Despite positive steps such as the introduction of Medicare Part D coverage for prescription drugs in 2006, seniors have increasingly paid more for health expenses directly from their pockets.

“Until a slowdown during this decade, out-of-pocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries rose dramatically — costs increased by 44% between 2000 and 2010 — and they are expected to continue to rise faster than overall inflation,” the researchers wrote.

To perform their study, which was introduced at the annual Joint Meeting of the Retirement Research Consortium in Washington, D.C. last week, the team analyzed individual data points for Social Security recipients aged 65 and older between 2002 and 2014. They found a wide range in medical spending among that cohort: For instance, while the median retiree spent $2,400 in 2014, the total group averaged $3,100 per person, with retirees in the 75th percentile logging $4,400.

The researchers also warn that they only analyzed medical expenses, citing a 2017 paper that concluded that housing costs, taxes, and “non-housing debt” eat up about 30% of a retiree’s income.

“Although out-of-pocket medical spending has declined somewhat since the instruction of Part D … these findings suggest that Social Security beneficiaries’ lifestyles remain vulnerable to a likely revival in medical spending growth,” the team concludes.

It’s been about a decade since the term “mortgage arbitrage” made headlines. It’s back.

In the clearest sign yet of just how late far the investing cycle the developed world finds itself,the FT writes that wealthy British homeowners are again borrowing against their property to invest in bonds, equities, alternative investments or commercial property as the low cost of debt creates opportunities for “mortgage arbitrage”. And while taking out a mortgage to invest in “safer” arbs like corporate bonds, commercial real estate or private equity would be at least understandable, if not excusable, in the current low-yield regime, some more extreme “investment” decisions suggest that the madness and euphoria that marked the peak of the last asset bubble is back: because while growing numbers are prepared to risk using their primary residence as collateral, some are ready to gamble on extremely volatile assets like bitcoin, wine and cars.

One broker said a mortgage-free homeowner with a house valued at £10m had taken out a fixed-rate loan of just under £2m to buy bitcoin, the crypto currency that has seen huge volatility in recent months. Others have invested in classic cars or fine wine. One former banker took out a £500,000 mortgage, not for investment purposes, but to provide a fund for routine spending and other eventualities.

To be sure, while these are extreme – and for now rare – examples of investor euphoria, even the more mundane “mortgage arbitrageurs” are willing to take major gambles: “Interest rates of less than 2 per cent on two- and five-year fixed-rate home loans are tempting high-income, mortgage-free homeowners to raise money against their property in the hope they can profit from higher rates of return elsewhere.”

Simon Gammon, director at mortgage broker Knight Frank Finance, said the arbitrage had emerged as a trend among financially sophisticated clients as mortgage rates fell.

“We’re a specialist lender at the top end but we’re seeing up to a dozen of these deals a month,” he said. “This is something that has come about because of the current environment of low rates.”

How prevalent is this behavior which peaked during the last housing/credit bubble?

Mark Pattanshetti, a mortgage manager at broker Largemortgageloans.com, said the number of borrowers taking out loans to fund investments had risen by about 50% since 2009. “Borrowers have realized the cost of debt is cheap and it isn’t going to get much cheaper,” he said. Unfortunately, what borrowers are forgetting is that home prices can drop as mortgage rates rise, while risk assets – impossible as it may sound – can correct sharply, hitting borrowers with the double whammy of rising LTVs as inbound margin calls force them to liquidate into a sliding market.

Ironically, anecdotal evidence suggests that this troubling behavior has been prompted be declining UK home prices – until recently one of the best performing British assets. This has been the result of Brexit-related concerns, a decline in Chinese and other foreign investors rushing after UK real estate, as well as concerns that the BOE will soon raise rates, resulting in increasingly more “for sale” signs.

As the FT notes, “for debt-free homeowners, remortgaging during the years of booming house prices was often a means of raising cash to carry out home improvements or expand a buy-to-let portfolio. But slowing house price growth and a regulatory and tax crackdown on landlords have made these options less attractive.

Hugh Wade-Jones, group managing director of mortgage broker Enness, said: “It’s accepted that property is no longer going to be the all-conquering investment, doubling every 10 years, so people are looking elsewhere for returns.”

In addition to bitcoin, cars and wines, borrowers with housing equity are putting money into everything from bonds and private equity and commercial property, brokers told the FT. David Adams, managing director of John Taylor, a Mayfair-based estate agent, said investors were borrowing against London residential properties to fund investment in commercial and mixed use developments from Southampton to Birmingham at returns of 6 to 7 per cent.

“Wealthy investors are no longer chasing capital gain. There is a switch to yield,” Adams said.

According to Knight Frank’s Gammon, the practice typically appealed to those with investment experience. “People who have not needed to borrow have looked at the rates available — and we’ve now got five-year fixed rates from 1.65 per cent — and said if I can’t make 1.65 per cent or more from my money, then I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Unfortunately, should home prices in the near future tumble while risk assets slide, crushing the “experienced” investors, that’s exactly what one can conclude.

Making it easier for the “smart investors” to bury themselves with margin calls, there are no regulations prohibiting this kind of behavior:

There is nothing in mortgage regulation to prevent someone raising a loan on a mortgage-free property for personal investments, as long as the lender assesses that the loan is affordable and not being used, for instance, to prop up a business generating income for its repayment.

Lenders, however, may choose to apply criteria that restrict the use of capital raised through a mortgage, although private banks are typically more relaxed about non-property investments than high street banks. For bigger mortgages, lenders will also moderate risk by insisting that the size of the loan does not exceed 60 per cent of the property’s value.

Naturally, it doesn’t take a big drop in the value of the property coupled with a slide in the “alternative investment” to wipe out the LTV buffer, pushing the value of the loan above the underlying collateral. That said, “the Financial Conduct Authority, which regulates mortgage lenders, declined to comment on individuals borrowing against their house for personal investments.”

In a tangent, the FT then focuses on the tax considerations of this risky behavior.

Unlike gains on a principal private residence, any gains on investments would be subject to capital gains tax (CGT). A wealthy homeowner may therefore seek to transfer borrowed funds to a spouse who has not used his or her annual CGT allowance. If the investment is designed to provide a stream of income, there could be a case for a transfer to a spouse who pays the basic rate of income tax, advisers said.

Nimesh Shah, a tax adviser at accountants Blick Rothenberg, said that if a homeowner took out a loan to invest in commercial property — and this was specified as the purpose of the loan — residential mortgage interest could potentially be offset against the commercial rental income.

Of course, the above assumes capital appreciation and therefore, capital gains. For now nobody is worrying on the more unpleasant outcome, one where there are no gains to book taxes again. Then again, in a wholesale wipeout at least the “smart money” will have years and years of NOLs carryforward losses to offset any future income taxes. Just like Donald Trump.

The housing market is suffering from a supply shortage, not a demand dilemma. As Millennial first-time homebuyer demand continues to increase, the inventory of homes for sale tightens. At the same time, prices are increasing, so why aren’t there more homeowners selling their homes?

In most markets, the seller, or supplier, makes their decision about adding supply to the market independent of the buyer, or source of demand, and their decision to buy. In the housing market, the seller and the buyer are, in many cases, actually the same economic actor. In order to buy a new home, you have to sell the home you already own.

So, in a market with rising prices and strong demand, what’s preventing existing homeowners from putting their homes on the market?

“Existing homeowners are increasingly financially imprisoned in their own home by their historically low mortgage rate. It makes choosing a kitchen renovation seem more appealing than moving.”

The housing market has experienced a long-run decline in mortgage rates from a high of 18 percent for the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage in 1981 to a low of almost 3 percent in 2012. Today, five years later, mortgage rates remain just a stone’s throw away from that historic low point. This long-run decline in rates encouraged existing homeowners to both move more often and to refinance more often, in many cases refinancing multiple times between each move.

It’s widely expected that mortgage rates will rise further. This is more important than we may even realize because the housing market has not experienced a rising rate environment in almost three decades! No longer is there a financial incentive to refinance for most homeowners, and there’s more to consider when moving. Why move when it will cost more each month to borrow the same amount from the bank? A homeowner can re-extend the mortgage term another 30 years to increase the amount one can borrow at the higher rate, but the mortgage has to be paid off at some point. Hopefully before or soon after retirement. Existing homeowners are increasingly financially imprisoned in their own home by their historically low mortgage rate. It makes choosing a kitchen renovation seem more appealing than moving.”

There is one more possibility caused by the fact that the existing-home owner is both seller and buyer. In today’s market, sellers face a prisoner’s dilemma, a situation in which individuals don’t cooperate with each other, even though it is seemingly in their best interest to do so.

Consider two existing homeowners. They both want to buy a new house and move, but are unable to communicate with each other. If they both choose to sell, they both benefit because they increase the inventory of homes available, and collectively alleviate the supply shortage. However, if one chooses to sell and the other doesn’t, the seller must buy a new home in a market with a shortage of supply, bidding wars and escalating prices. Because of this risk, neither homeowner sells (non-cooperation) and neither get what they wanted in the first place – a move to a new, more desirable home. Imagine this scenario playing out across an entire market. If everyone sells there will be plenty of supply. But, the risk of selling when others don’t convinces everyone not to sell and produces the non-cooperative outcome.

Possible Outcomes

Owner moves, but pays a price escalated by supply shortages for a more desirable home

Owner stays in current house and does not get a more desirable home

Owner moves, finding a more desirable home without paying a price escalated by supply shortages

Rising mortgage rates and the fear of not being able to find something affordable to buy is imprisoning homeowners and causing the inventory shortages that are seen in practically every market across the country. So, what gives in a market short of supply relative to demand? Prices.According to the First American Real House Price Index, the fast pace of house price growth, combined with rising rates, has had a material impact on affordability. In our most recent analysis in April, affordability was down 11 percent compared to a year ago. It was once said that a man’s home is his castle. In today’s market, a man’s home may be his prison, but he is getting wealthier for it.

Each new policy destroys another level of prudent fiscal/financial discipline.

The primary driver of our economy–financialization–is in a death spiral. Financialization substitutes expansion of interest, leverage and speculation for real-world expansion of goods, services and wages.

Financial “wealth” created by leveraging more debt on a base of real-world collateral that doesn’t actually produce more goods and services flows to the top of the wealth-power pyramid, driving the soaring wealth-income inequality we see everywhere in the global economy.

As this phantom wealth pours into assets such as stocks, bonds and real estate, it has pushed the value of these assets into the stratosphere, out of reach of the bottom 95% whose incomes have stagnated for the past 16 years.

The core problem with financialization is that it requires ever more extreme policies to keep it going. These policies are mutually reinforcing, meaning that the total impact becomes geometric rather than linear. Put another way, the fragility and instability generated by each new policy extreme reinforces the negative consequences of previous policies.

These extremes don’t just pile up like bricks–they fuel a parabolic rise in systemic leverage, debt, speculation, fragility, distortion and instability.

This accretive, mutually reinforcing, geometric rise in systemic fragility that is the unavoidable output of financialization is poorly understood, not just by laypeople but by the financial punditry and professional economists.

Gordon Long and I cover the policy extremes which have locked our financial system into a death spiral in a new 50-minute presentation, The Road to Financialization. Each “fix” that boosts leverage and debt fuels a speculative boom that then fizzles when the distortions introduced by financialization destabilize the real economy’s credit-business cycle.

Each new policy destroys another level of prudent fiscal/financial discipline.

The discipline of sound money? Gone.

The discipline of limited leverage? Gone.

The discipline of prudent lending? Gone.

The discipline of mark-to-market discovery of the price of collateral? Gone.

The discipline of losses being absorbed by those who generated the loans? Gone.

And so on: every structural source of discipline has been eradicated, weakened or hollowed out. Financialization has consumed the nation’s seed corn, and the harvest of instability is ripening in the fields of finance and the real economy alike.

BofA Has A Troubling Answer

America’sbiggest as of 2016 generation, the Millennials, has a heavy burden on itscollective 150 million shoulders: its task is to not only step in as a buyer of stocks once the baby boomers begin selling in bulk, but to also provide the much needed support pillar for the recovery of the US housing market. In fact, there have been countless “bullish” housing market theories built upon the premise that sooner or later tens of millions of young American adults will emerge from their parents’ basements, start a household, and buy a house.

So far that theory has not been validated. One simple reason is that Millennials simply can’t afford to buy a house. As we reported last week, a study from Apartment List showed that nearly 70% of young American adults, those aged 18 to 34 years old, said they have saved less than $1,000 for a down payment. This is similar to what a recentGoBanking Survey found last year, according to which 72% of “young millennials”- those between 18 and 24 years old – had $1,000 in their savings accounts and 31% have $0; a sliver (8%) have over $10,000 saved. Of the “older millennials”, those between 25 and 34, 67% had less than $1,000 in their savings accounts, 33% have nothing at all, and 15% had over $10,000.

So does that mean that Millennials can simply be written off as a potential generation of homeowners, and if so, what are the implications for the broader housing market?

That’s the question BofA economist Michelle Meyer asked on Friday, although she phrased it in the proper context: “Is it [still] cool to buy a home.“

To our surprise, Meyer found that while the home ownership rate among young adults has plunged to a record low, helping to explain the slow recovery in single family home building, and confirming empirical observations that Millennials have largely been a ‘renter’ generation, by Bank of America’s calculations, the Millennial generation can afford to buy a home – at least in terms of making the monthly payments. While we – and many others would dispute that – BofA does make some other interesting observations, namely that lifestyle changes, including delayed marriage and child rearing, have led to fewer homeowners and a tendency to live close to city centers. Well, if it’s not money it’s clearly something else. Let’s dig in.

First, here is BofA on a rather trivial, if critical topic: “the importance of the youth”

In order to understand the future of the housing stock, it helps to get a grasp on the growth in population, which is a function of immigration and the rate of births/deaths. The Census Bureau is projecting population growth of 0.8% annually over the next decade and 0.7%, on average, through 2036, showing continued slowing from the 0.9% average last decade. Perhaps even more important, however, is the age composition, with a particular focus on young adults who are the drivers of household formation. There are currently 75 million individuals considered to be Millennials, making up the largest generation. The average age is 27.5, implying that there is a large cohort of young adults coming to age (Chart 1). In theory, this should underpin growth in home ownership. But, it is complicated – we have to understand the ability of Millennials to afford housing and the desire to become homeowners vs. renters.

Can they afford to buy?

The first question to ask is whether the younger generation can afford to buy a home. We turn to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) affordability index which is a ratio between median family income and the qualifying income for a mortgage as a function of median existing single-family home prices and mortgage rates. According to this measure, homeownership is still very affordable relative to history. What about for young adults? Following the NAR’s methodology, we compute an affordability measure for the 25-34 year old age cohort using median household income data from the Census Bureau. Our computed index only goes to 2015 given data limitations, but we extrapolate forward (Chart 2). We find that housing is still affordable for young adults, although not to the extent it is for the overall population. The gap in affordability between the overall population and young adults has widened over the years. That said, the affordability index for young adults is still above the historical average for the aggregate, implying that housing is generally affordable.

So what seems to be the problem? One obstacle is being able to make the downpayment. The NAR measure assumes a 20% down payment, which is a high hurdle for young adults– remember that the bulk of the current 25-34 year old cohort started their careers during the financial crisis and early stages of the recovery, when the economy and labor market were fragile. Plugging in a lower down payment of 10% and the situation looks worse due to increased principal and interest payments.With a 10% downpayment, the index would be at 125.2 in 2015, which is 11% lower than the standard 25-34 year old index and 25% lower than the broad NAR index.

Another challenge is the ability to take on a mortgage loan given high student debt. According to the NY Fed’s credit panel, total outstanding student debt has reached $1.3 trillion, a substantial increase from the $260bn level in 2004. According to the NAR’s Generational Report, nearly 50% of homebuyers under the age of 36 noted that student debt delayed their home purchase, making it harder to afford the downpayment. And, of course, there is the challenge from tighter credit standards which has made it more difficult to achieve homeownership.

But do they want to buy?

Addressing whether Millennials can afford to buy is only one part of the story. We need to understand if they actually want to buy. The homeownership rate has tumbled at a faster rate for 25-34 year olds than for other generations which we do not think can be explained by affordability metrics (Chart 3). We think it also owes to lifestyle changes. Maybe there is something to the stories about Millennials preferring to spend money on avocado toast instead of their home?

The shopping cart of young adults

Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we can look at the evolution of the consumer basket over time for those aged 24-35 (Table 1). Relative to the peak of the housing bubble in 2004, there has been a decline in the share of dollars spent on owned shelter and an increase in spending on renting. It also seems that this age group is spending more on healthcare and household operations, which include services paid to keep their household running efficiently (think cleaning). This has come at the expense of spending on apparel, transportation and groceries. The young adult in 2004 has a difference shopping cart than one today.

The single life

The change in spending patterns could reflect the fact that young adults are not only less likely to be homeowners, but they are less likely to be married or even live independently. Instead, this age group is living with parents or other relatives more than in the past (Chart 4). This adjustment in living arrangements has been ongoing for years but the Great Recession seemed to have speed up the trend. Today only 55% of those aged 25-34 live with a spouse/partner compared to over 80% in 1967. Life events such as getting married or having children are typical triggers to buying a home. The longer this age group lives with parents or independently, the more home ownership will be delayed.

City slickers

We have also seen a shift toward urban centers and away from rural areas over the years. This goes hand-in-hand with a decline in home ownership for young adults. Interestingly the share of young adults living in the suburbs has been fairly steady at around 41% (Chart 5). Moreover, it appears that there is a flocking toward the major cities, specifically in the city centers which are close to transit, workplaces and restaurants. City centers typically have more rental properties than the suburbs. But we also see greater home sales close to city centers than in the past. According to BuildZoom, new home sales within 5 miles of the centers of the 10 most densely cities have exceeded 2000 levels but if you go another 10 miles out, sales are about 50% below 2000 levels.

There are both cyclical and secular forces behind the drop in the home ownership rate for young adults. While young adults can generally afford housing, there are other constraints including the ability to make a large enough down payment and tighter credit standards. Lifestyle changes are partly to blame.

BofA’ troubling conclusion: “These dynamics won’t change in the medium-term which should translate to a lower equilibrium pace for single family housing starts.”